Man turns olives to gourmet oil
Drive west on Nash Road and olive trees are visible long before
visitors begin the ascent to A. J. Moley’s hillside property. It is
the olive trees that sold him on the location in the first
place.
”
I love to farm and I figured if I stay in California I should do
something I like,
”
he said.
Man turns olives to gourmet oil
Drive west on Nash Road and olive trees are visible long before visitors begin the ascent to A. J. Moley’s hillside property. It is the olive trees that sold him on the location in the first place.
“I love to farm and I figured if I stay in California I should do something I like,” he said.
Moley purchased the property off Riverside Road in 2003 and the 10 acres of olive trees were smaller than the weeds that had grown up around them. Moley, who works full-time as a contractor on government construction projects, set to work cleaning up the olive orchard.
“I figured I’d make them grow,” he said.
Though he grew up on a farm – his father raised cattle and hogs, he said – he knew nothing about caring for olive trees. That soon changed as he attended classes put on by the University of California Cooperative Extension.
Each summer, their staff offers a variety of classes and workshops dealing with many different fruit trees or crops.
“I was fascinated by olive trees,” Moley said. “They are not like anything else. They self-pollinate. They can grow in arid conditions.”
After cleaning out the weeds and terracing the hillside – ‘It was suicide’ he said of walking on it before – Moley decided to harvest the olives and have them pressed into olive oil.
“This year, the trees are still young, of course, but we pulled 275 gallons,” Moley said. “Every tree out there except for 54 have olives.”
The trees will continue to grow and produce more olives every year.
“They are just babies right now,” he said.
Moley works with 25 pickers each November, and last year they completed the harvest in two days.
“The oil is pressed the very next day,” he said. “We are getting a good acidity of .09. It’s a really good oil.”
His oils are cold pressed, which produces a lower acid level – extra virgin olive oils have to be below 1 percent. The oil is a golden color in the bottle, and has sediment at the bottom since he skips the last filtration process because he believes it leaves more flavor in the oil.
The olives are trucked to Modesto where they are pressed at Sciabica, a maker of olive oil since the 1920s. He will continue to press his oil there until he has enough to make it realistic to buy his own press.
“I would love to make it full-time someday,” he said. “I have a shop built for the oil business. It has a bottling room, the whole-nine yards. But right now it’s just an expensive hobby.”
For a hobby, Moley’s bottled olive oil looks slick. He worked with a graphic designer to come up with the label, which features a picture of his grandfather Giovanni Mulè.
On his Web site, where people can purchase the oil, he explains that the family name was altered when Grandpa Giovanni came through Ellis Island in 1895.
“My grandfather’s dream was to come to California to do grapes,” Moley said. “But he got married and worked on the railroad back East, and never made it.”
Moley did make it and is carrying out part of his grandfather’s dream with his olive trees.
“I’m no scholar when it comes to trees, but I know enough to make it work,” Moley said.
And Moley’s favorite way to use his olive oil?
“On salads I used to use oil and vinegar, but now I just use oil,” he said. “And on pasta, I’ll just toss it with oil.”
For more information on Sons of Sicily olive oil, visit www.sons-of-sicily.com/ or call A. J. Moley at 635-9019.
